St. Patrick's Day 2015

Leprechaun trap blueprint

After reading The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day, grade ones planned and created blueprints of their leprechaun traps.  After sharing their traps, students set their traps around the room before going home. 

We also tried some Clever Tom math!

When we returned the next day, our indoor shoes were gone, and our classroom was a mess!  Although we did not catch a leprechaun (this time), all the traps had a note left by a leprechaun visitor, along with gold coins!

We wrote poems about leprechauns and learned about how St. Patrick shared meaning of the trinity using the shamrock.  We created our own shamrocks to remind of his beautiful story.

The Trinity as told by St. Patrick

All Things Gingerbread!

We enjoyed reading and comparing many versions of the classic story, The Gingerbread Man.  Mrs. Champion baked a gingerbread at home and brought him to our class.

  While we were away at lunch, he ran away from our class!  The good news is, though, he left us clues to track him down.  We finally found him in Madame Launiere’s office!  We wrote about our adventures with the Gingerbread Man by writing our own books, The Gingerbread Man is Loose in St. Matthew School, including mapping his route on our school floorplan!  

In art, we made gingerbread prints using foam and a brayer.  We added a little bit of cinnamon on our white glue icing to finish them off J  Next, we designing and then built our very own gingerbread houses.

The ducklings went for their first swim!  Wow!  They knew how to swim without anyone showing them!  Students delighted watching the ducklings swim right at eye-level.

After reading many books, both fiction and non-fiction, about ducks, we were inspired to create an art project with tempera, construction paper, and sponge painting.

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Insert web photos of pens
River critters
School clean up

The Best Part of Me

As part of our Catholic Community of Caring, every St. Matthew student had his or her best part photographed and each student wrote about  why he or she chose this part.  This was a wonderful cross-curricular activity, engaging the Health, Language Arts, and ICT outcomes.  Thanks to Mrs. LeClair for her incredible photographs!

Class, Class, Who Do You See?

Students learned about one another during the first month of school.  We read many stories about belonging, and were inspired by the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Jump Rope For Hearts!

As part of their physical education curriculum, grade one students learned various ways to jump rope (skip)!  In the process, they also raised money for the Jump Rope For Heart campaign!